A complicated comeback path for Brian Pothier

Brian Pothier was injured in a March 8, 2012, "playout" game while skating for Geneve-Survette of the Swiss Elite League. He went through a battery of examinations during the summer and was deemed unfit to play professional hockey.

Brian Pothier was injured in a March 8, 2012, "playout" game while skating for Geneve-Survette of the Swiss Elite League. He went through a battery of examinations during the summer and was deemed unfit to play professional hockey.

Pothier's post-concussion symptoms are not the classic ones you read about, or at least they don't surface in the typical chain of events. When discussing how his brain receives input from his eyes, the inner ear and spinal cord, he says it is brain activity processing information from multiple sources at once that can create a storm inside.

"What happens with me is all three of those things are working well "» sending good information to my brain. The problem is, once it gets to my brain "» the information is not deciphering properly," said Pothier. "If I just use my eyes, I can hang in there pretty good."

It's when he is using all of those systems together than his brain overloads.

"How it shuts down is like a carnival ride," said Pothier. "You start sweating and you get that nauseous feeling. If you keep pushing "» you'll eventually get sick "» if I overdo it, for three days I'm sentenced to the couch."

Pothier spent countless days on the couch throughout 2008 after a concussion sustained while playing in the NHL for the Washington Capitals. It was several months before it was learned that the concussion feared to be threatening his career had actually been cured and that a nervous system aggravated while processing visual information was posing as post-concussion syndrome. Once that was addressed by a specialist in North Carolina, Pothier rehabbed with visual acuity drills and came back to play 13 playoff games for the Capitals in 2009. He was traded to the Carolina Hurricanes in 2010 and, that summer, signed with Geneve-Survette of the Swiss National League "A."

After his injury there, he was lucky if he could have two or three good days in a week.

"Now I've got myself running, skating with UMass Dartmouth," said Pothier, whose work as a volunteer assistant coach is considered an important part of his rehab by his doctors, by Geneve-Survette HC and the insurance company.

Symptoms and setbacks remain a possibility on any given day, but Pothier is making progress and is not giving up on a return to action.

"I'm able to push myself a little bit further all the time. I'm always flirting with that line," he said. "I've gotten pretty good at understanding when (symptoms are) going to flare up."